Review: Avengers 2 -- Age Of Ultron (3D)

The "Age of Ultron" spanned less than a week. Lots of moving parts which individually are mostly fun but the whole "robot decides to destroy humanity in order to achieve world peace" trope is well-tired. Ultron is a pretty disappointing enemy. Nobody really calls Tony out for trying to correct his mistake with a robotic AI by trying to loose another AI. It makes me think that the "arc" purpose of this movie was to A) introduce The Vision and B) move the Avengers members out so that they can be replaced with (the New?  the Young?  the Uncanny?  the Ultimate?) Avengers. Overall though it was an adequate way to spend two and a half hours.

From a "going to the movies" perspective, this was opening day, and we got neither any teasers nor a post-credits thing (ie like the shwarma thing in the first Avengers). We were disappointed.

The 3D was neither intrusive nor especially noticeable. Frankly I still wonder why people pay for it.

Review: Furious Seven

First of all, yes I know it is all over the media and elsewhere as "Furious 7", but I did note that the number was spelled as a word in the title card of the actual movie.  So while I be pedantic, why don't the rest of you just pretend you know what I'm talking about.

As far as the franchise goes, I saw the first one, and ma-a-a-a-be the second one.  I knew there had been more, but frankly I had no idea that this was the seventh.  Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any requirement to have seen... well, any of the previous ones because A) I effectively didn't remember anything about the ones I had seen and B) gratuitous flashbacks bring you up to speed on the salient points as required.  (Or as required by the editor's need to fill time slash band-aid over Paul Walker's inclusive exclusion or something.)

Anyways, any complaint about this movie can be explained away with the phrase "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"

For example:

• The dialogue is terrible. "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"
• The plot is ridiculous where it exists at all. "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"
• I don't understand where all these cars that the characters blow up come from.  "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"
• The attempts to band-aid over the band-aiding of Paul Walker's death made the whole thing seem uneven.  "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"
• Kinda too shooty-shooty-bang-bang for my tastes.  "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"
• Why is Furious Seven showing in all four of the large-format theaters at Landmark simultaneously?  "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"
• My popcorn is kind of stale here.  "Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?"

See?  So it kind of makes the whole "review" idea superfluous.

Hey, it's a Fast And Furious franchise movie, what do you want?

Burger Time: Five Guys

Overall: it was okay, but it sure wasn't a Vera's.  Make no mistake, it was a very well done burger, lots of food, all of it good, maybe a bit pricier than I might like (although in the same ball park as Vera's).

I think what disappointed me the most was the metal chairs done up to look like wood chairs, and the fact that all the decorations in the room -- plus most of the decorations on things like the cups -- were reminders to you that all these people over all these years had voted Five Guys Most Likely To Succeed or something.  Look, it is fine to be proud of your accomplishments and all, but I don't need to sit in a room with you telling me how much other people like you.  I'm there.  You have my money.  Let your food do the talking for you.

Of course, after listening to the food... maybe that's why they overcompensate a bit.

Lookie what I found

So it turns out that OwnCloud community RPMs clobber local .htaccess changes when upgrading:

[root@voyager owncloud]# cp .htaccess .htaccess.8.0.2
[root@voyager owncloud]# yum check-update
[...]
owncloud-3rdparty.noarch 8.0.2-16.1 isv_ownCloud_community
owncloud-app-activity.noarch 8.0.2-16.1 isv_ownCloud_community
owncloud-app-external.noarch 8.0.2-16.1 isv_ownCloud_community
[...]
[root@voyager owncloud]# yum -y update
[...]
Updating : owncloud-app-gallery-8.0.2-16.1.noarch 34/92
Updating : owncloud-server-8.0.2-16.1.noarch 35/92
[...]
[root@voyager owncloud]# diff .htaccess*
11,12c11,14
< php_value upload_max_filesize 513M
< php_value post_max_size 513M
---
> php_value upload_max_filesize 16G
> php_value post_max_size 16G
> php_value max_input_time 3600
> php_value max_execution_time 3600
49a52,54
>
> ErrorDocument 403 /owncloud/core/templates/403.php
> ErrorDocument 404 /owncloud/core/templates/404.php

Review: Home

Jim Parsons is going to get typecast as his Big-Bang Theory character Sheldon for the rest of his life. He probably won't mind, because he'll probably end up very rich because of it.  Home is a vehicle for Sheldon-isms without the burden of the rest of TBBT cast or, you know, a plausible plot, and ends up with the predictable Here's The Message at the end that children's movies have to have these days. I got tired of the Sheldon-isms about 15 minutes into the movie, but got past that and it was a pretty good ride.  The Message is the message, but even that doesn't intrude too much.  And they made pretty good attempts to insert references for the adults, the most obvious being the Star Wars hang and the outatime license plate spin.  So yeah, it was OK for a movie, which is a good thing, because we're going to see it again in two weeks as part of a Birthday Party.

Religious Doctors

So if* Ontario doctors win the right to A) refuse to provide a particular treatment on the grounds of religious freedom AND B) refuse to refer their patients to doctors who will provide said treatment, will patients get the right to interrogate their doctors on their religious beliefs before or during any consultation or treatment planning?

Seems to me they'd have to.  You can't have it both ways -- if you have a religious right that may directly influence a course of treatment you may or may not propose and/or carry out, I as the patient should have the right to be fully informed as to where your influences are coming from.

Alternatively, if some doctors want freedom of religion, and that religion precludes them performing some of the duties of being a doctor, maybe the correct resolution of this conflict is for those people to recognize they can't be doctors in Ontario.

It is one thing to say "I don't believe it is right for me to do this" and quite another to say "I don't believe it is right for anyone to do this".  Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose; in this case the practice of these religions is affecting other, probably non-practitioners, and I think that the right to practice your religion ends at my health care.

* = I don't think it will come to that.

Migration Contemplation -- An Even Crazier Idea

(Previously.)

So it occurs to me: if a Mac, ie new hardware, is on the table, why not consider doing something really stupid?

I mean, yeah, no half-measures here.  If you want portable, let's get portable.

But exactly how stupid an idea would it be?

• It has a small display.
• RAM is limited to 8GB.
• Storage is limited to 512GB.
• It is totally non-upgradable.
• It fails the "too small to be a primary computer test", but does so so convincingly that the lack of heft becomes a virtue, not a liability.

On the positive side:

• It is ultra-portable.  It is small.  I like small.  My first laptop was an "executive" laptop, something that became one of the first "Ultrabooks" before those started to bloat into whatever they have become.  This would be small.
• There pretty much isn't anything I do today that I couldn't do with this.  It would pass all my criteria for staying with Windows.  I could even fit all my current storage needs into it, although barely -- and the form factor would mean that most of my VM'ing would be pointless and those things could go.
• You can get an i7, which should be enough horsepower to get me around for a few years..
• It has an available docking station with multiple USB ports, a Gb interface, and a video out, and can apparently run two external 1080p monitors at the same time that the main display is running.  So I could probably buy a third monitor and do two monitors natively plus a third through USB, and have the tablet display turned off while it was docked.

But it's probably expensive, right?

Oh.

Oh, my.

Help, this isn't looking like a stupid idea after all.